Advanced age hinders accepting more than it hampers understanding. The resistance fuelled by conditioning than sound sense or fair play. My folks know there’s a contagion in the air and that it’s a mean one – after all, the chief minister of the state can’t be lying everyday on the dot at 6PM. But why would it come in the way of life as they know it they refuse to understand. Or maybe just quick to forget. Like the people in hinterland Chhattisgarh who keep lolloping across their erstwhile backyards
A tribal woman, heavily pregnant, leaned against the iron gate sliding it open and walked into the health centre. Her gait was strained as she had broken water. Too weak to press the electric bell she just about managed to spread out a mat on the corner and collapse. She was alone; her husband was a rabble-rousing Captain Cooker with political ambitions who believed pregnant women were hoodoos to be avoided at all costs. The saving grace about him, I was told later, was that he wasn’t a soak and
